We’re SO glad these two girls are back home!
Seven-year-old Delila Miller and her 12-year-old sister Fannie Miller were believed, by police, to have been abducted on Wednesday night around 7:20 p.m. in the town of Oswegatchie, New York.
The two young Amish girls were waiting on a customer near Highway 812 at their family’s stand when a witness saw the car’s passenger throw something in the back of the car and take off. The girls had disappeared once the small white 4-door sedan drove away.
The search effort was complicated by the fact that there were no photos for the police to use, as the Amish do not allow any types of photography, however the police were able to eventually secure a sketch of 12-year-old Fannie with the help of their family.
As it turns out, the photos weren’t even needed, because it was the two sisters who returned, without being found, after they said they were dropped off in a town named Richville nearly twenty miles away from their family farm Thursday night.
WEIRD.
They knocked on a house in the town and the residents of that house immediately knew who the girls were after their previous abduction set off an Amber Alert all throughout the state of New York.
Although there have been no arrests in this case as of yet, the most important thing is that the girls are safe which, according to the district attorney Mary E. Rain, they are. She said:
“It looks like they are physically in good health [though] they are cold and wet.”
Previously, when the girls were still missing, police said they had “numerous leads” and were being helped by state troopers, forest rangers and U.S. Border Patrol agents who were scouring everywhere and anywhere around and in the town near the Canadian border.
But the search had a lot of problems stemming from the fact that there were a lot of lost in translation issues between the police and the Amish family. And, of course, the no photographs of the girls issue.
Much of the search for the girls was based on their clothing – both had on a blue dress and apron with a black bonnet – and their physical descriptions.
Seven-year-old Delila’s Amber Alert description included that she was 4 feet tall, with brown hair and brown eyes, and “has round scar on forehead and is missing front teeth.”
12-year-old Fannie description included that she’s about 5 feet tall, weighs about 90 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, and is cross eyed.
It was only later on that the sketch was drawn up, and passed amongst the search parties.
Hopefully they’ll catch whomever the perpetrators of this could’ve-been-a-lot-worse crime, and the entire community can go back to feeling safe.
And stop it from ever happening again.
[Image via St. Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office.]